News

Police arrest man for Civic assaults

After the police initially dismissing concerns raised in the local media about Civic’s safety, they have gone out and arrested someone to reassure people they are doing their job.

In this release they tell us a 19-year-old Rivett man has been arrested for involvement in two recent assaults and robberies. The arrest came after police interviewed people beleived to have been involved in the incidents, which took place on 13 and 20 August.

The officer in charge of the Civic station, detective Sargeant Harry Hains is, as could be expected, highly positive about the whole thing and says of course police are doing their jobs.

â€œThere has been a committed police effort, as there always is with matters such as these, to investigate and apprehend those whom we allege are responsible for these crimes,” he says in the release.

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â€œThere has been a combination of forensic and intelligence evidence we have used, as well as solid policing to make todayâ€™s arrest, and we expect further developments will follow in the coming days.”

What’s Your opinion?

G, due to the lack of transparency and accountability that we keep banging on about we have a problem knowing what it is the police are up to and “trust us” has never cut it.

When police meida responded to this by saying there was no problem and the victims had been in the wrong place it inspired even less confidence. From the outside looking in it still appears that media profile got these cases a degree of attention which other similar assaults have not had.

Anyway the trouble with getting tough on scum is that we’ve got 300,000 people who think that “scum” means “everyone but me”.

Which is not to say some harsher punishment of serial offenders would upset me any.

K – I think Det Sgt Hains comment was probably in reply to something like what you wrote – “Amazing what a bit of media pressure can do.”

I think the media bases its expectations on TV shows.

I did some searching on the ACT Govt website under legislation and came up with this out of the Crimes ACt 1900. I am not seeing “pressure from the media” as one of the grounds for arrest.

212 Power of arrest without warrant by police officers
(1) A police officer may, without warrant, arrest a person for an offence if the police officer suspects on reasonable grounds thatâ€”
(a) the person has committed or is committing the offence; and
(b) proceedings by summons against the person would not achieve 1 or more of the following purposes:
(i) ensuring the appearance of the person before a court in respect of the offence;
(ii) preventing a repetition or continuation of the offence or the commission of another offence;
(iii) preventing the concealment, loss or destruction of evidence relating to the offence;
(iv) preventing harassment of, or interference with, a person who may be required to give evidence in proceedings in respect of the offence;
(v) preventing the fabrication of evidence in respect of the offence;
(vi) preserving the safety or welfare of the person.

As for the X number of fights in Civic – it happens every weekend. Instant dickhead just add alcohol.

These wankers may have been getting in fights every weekend for the past couple of years, and never been picked up. They probably got there arse kicked and went running to the Police screaming assault.

I think the Police have done an excellent job with this one, and the investigation into the little prick who hit Clea Rose. As I said give credit where it is due.

G, firstly I hardly ever manage to watch tv these days, so I’m sure I haven’t got my expectations about police from American cop dramas.

Have another look at Det Sgt Hains’s comments, particularly “as there always is with matters such as these” — you don’t think that could be in response to media pressure saying what are all these lazy police doing, there’s been x number of assaults and no arrests?

The only problem with having all ‘decent folk’ as I see it would be that we would have nothing to judge what being a good person is…. or the standard of being a good person will be raised leaving those of us outside the norm already will be considered crims – purely on the fact that they will become societies only basis for comparison…. ya? ya? ya?

I don’t give a damn about developing countries or not; for me the ends justifies the means. Ninety percent of these f*ckers cannot be rehabilitated. As for the other ten percent…. well there’s bound to human error, but at least we won’t have to take the risk of seeing the same faces in the papers.

Not only that, but by my maths we’ll eventually arrive at a place where our crime rate is minimal and there are only decent folks left.

Why can’t we have Police that save us all a shitload of bother and just take these scumbags out into the bush, make them dig a 6ft deep hole for themselves, and then shoot them in the back of the head; just like they do in some developing countries?

I think Kerces wants it all or has been watching too much TV where the Police will have identified the offender, locked them up, had the trial all within the hour. On top of that they have been given a decent sentence.

Kerces, Give credit where credits due.

Civic is just as safe this weekend as it was 5 weekends ago. Any particular weekend could have some little gansta wannabe rolling people for $20 and a mobile phone.

Generally in Canberra unless there is some aspect of a Police screw up twist to the story the CT don’t want to know about it. Or they will just make it up to suit themsleves.

You would never see a crim with 250 burglary convitions under their belt only getting 12 months imprsonment, a driver convicted of neg driving occasioning death only getting 4 months imprisonment etc anywhere but the ACT.